Asus R9 285 STRIX Review

Today we test with the latest Catalyst 14.7 beta driver and Forceware 340.52 driver. We didn't receive a reference clocked AMD R9 285 to review, so to be even handed we tested against other overclocked solutions widely available today from both Nvidia and AMD partners.

We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by DINOPC and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.

We include the GTX750Ti today as a comparison to show you what you can get if you move up from the £100-£120 market.

We tried to downclock the XFX R9 280 Black OC Edition to the same 954mhz speed as the Asus R9 285 Strix, but we couldn't get the clock speed to hold at these speeds without variances. We therefore tested all cards at their ‘out of the box' speeds in this review today.

Comparison cards:

XFX R9 280X (1000 mhz more / 1500 mhz memory)
XFX R9 280 Black OC Edition (1000 mhz core / 1300 mhz memory)
Asus GTX760 Direct CU II OC (1006 mhz core / 1502 mhz memory)
Asus GTX750 Ti (1072 mhz / 1350 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Software and Games:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Unigine Heaven
Unigine Valley
Tomb Raider
Grid Autosport
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Battlefield 4
Thief
Total War: Rome 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

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